CRITIC'S CHOICE: NEW DVD'S

By Dave Kehr

Alexander Director's Cut

Oliver Stone's revised version of his recent box-office disappointment, ''Alexander,'' is only one of many movies to be made available in ''director's cuts'' on DVD, but it may be the first to feel like a complete do-over. For ''Alexander Director's Cut,'' as the revised version is inelegantly but officially titled, Mr. Stone has removed 20 minutes of material from his biographical epic about the Macedonian conqueror of the fourth century B.C., played with shaved legs and blond curls by the Irish actor Colin Farrell, and added 12 minutes of new scenes, centered chiefly on the character of Alexander's domineering, snake-worshiping mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie).

The cover copy describes ''Alexander Director's Cut'' as ''Newly inspired, faster paced, more action-packed!'' But Mr. Stone has mostly concentrated his energies on cutting back his portrayal of Alexander's bisexuality, though probably not to the point of earning an endorsement from Focus on the Family. Alexander may no longer invite his lifelong love, Hephaistion (Jared Leto), to join him in bed, but the smoldering looks remain. In the meantime, Ms. Jolie's extravagant portrayal of Olympias has been inflated to the ''Mommie Dearest'' level as she browbeats her helpless son into challenging his father, Philip II (Val Kilmer, one of many actors in the film sporting a one-eyed look).

Published: August 2, 2005

Despite the vast, chaotically filmed battle sequences, the picture resolves itself into the strained psychodrama that underlies much of Mr. Stone's work: the uncertain son divided between a distant, authoritarian father and an eccentric, smothering mother. For purists, the original 175-minute theatrical cut is also available as a separate disc. Warner Home Video. 2004. $29.95. Rated R.

Two With John Wayne

The statistics are there to suggest that John Wayne was the biggest movie star of all time, with a career that, counting his early work as an extra and a prop man, stretched over 50 years and more than 180 titles. Wayne fans have long been frustrated by the unavailability of a few important entries in his filmography, which have largely remained in the vaults of Wayne's production company, Batjac, since they were first released.

Now, the family stock is coming out through Paramount Home Entertainment, beginning with what is probably the most requested of those titles, William Wellman's 1954 film ''The High and the Mighty.'' Though the negative reportedly suffered severe water damage, you'd never know it from the restoration on the Paramount disc, which offers bright, fully saturated colors across a sharp CinemaScope image, along with a choice between the original three-channel stereo soundtrack and a five-channel remix.

Often cited as among the first examples of the disaster film, in which a catastrophic event (the sinking of the luxury liner Poseidon, for example) serves to sort out the personal problems of a small group of troubled characters, ''The High and the Mighty'' remains superb entertainment.

Wellman does not have the artistic instincts of a John Ford or a Howard Hawks, but he uses Wayne quite well (and quite sparingly) as Dan Roman, a veteran flier who after a life-shattering crash has been reduced to being co-pilot of a passenger plane traveling between Hawaii and San Francisco. After briefly introducing the Wayne character at the beginning -- a loner given to mournfully whistling Dimitri Tiomkin's Oscar-winning musical theme -- Wellman keeps Wayne offstage for much of the next 90 minutes as the script establishes the various mini-dramas gripping the plane's load of passengers (including Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Jan Sterling, Phil Harris and Paul Kelly). Only when an engine flames out, forcing the pilot (Robert Stack), a secret coward, into contemplating a crash landing, does Wayne step up from the background. He immediately establishes his authority and expertise, not by bluster and bellowing but simply with a few well-directed glances.

Accompanying ''The High and the Mighty'' is another Wayne-Wellman collaboration, the black-and-white feature ''Island in the Sky,'' released in 1953. In this one (also written by Ernest K. Gann of ''The High and the Mighty''), Wayne is the pilot of an Army transport plane that goes down in the uncharted territory of sub-Arctic Canada; his pilot friends, among them Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Andy Devine and Harry Carey Jr., band together to conduct a search. Wellman's literally tearful sentimentality about male friendship is, again, something neither Ford nor Hawks would have tolerated, but this is a solid little film that looks forward to Robert Aldrich's elegant ''Flight of the Phoenix.''

Both films come with an almost overwhelming wealth of extras -- an entire extra disc's worth in the case of ''High,'' which as a result lists for $19.95 as opposed to $14.95 for the single-disc ''Island.'' Neither film has been rated.

Five by Claude Chabrol

Like several French colleagues, including Jacques Rivette, Bertrand Tavernier and Alain Resnais, the New Wave veteran Claude Chabrol hasn't had an easy time getting his recent films shown in an American marketplace overwhelmingly dominated by domestic independent productions. The courageous independent distributor KimStim has now released five relatively unknown Chabrol films, all drawn from the excellent transfers prepared by France's MK2 Distribution, three of which are new to American audiences.

All praise to the anonymous individual who translated the title of Mr. Chabrol's 1985 ''Poulet au Vinaigre'' as ''Cop au Vin'' (poulet being French slang for policeman, as well as the word for chicken). This 1985 film gave the actor and playwright Jean Poiret (among his written work, ''La Cage aux Folles'') his start as the unconventional Inspector Lavardin, a provincial cop with a deceptively mild, ironic manner and a taste for vigorous interrogation techniques. In ''Cop au Vin,'' he investigates a series of murders in a small town that feels a lot like the cramped, paranoid, Vichy-era village of Henri-Georges Clouzot's ''Corbeau'' from 1943, and does so stylishly enough that he inspired a 1986 sequel by Mr. Chabrol, ''Inspecteur Lavardin'' (included in this batch of releases), as well as three television movies.

This is Mr. Chabrol at his deceptively lightest, working in plenty of humor and soft-pedaling his often devastating insights into the network of lust and greed that underlies his vision of provincial life. ''The Color of Lies'' (''Au Coeur du Mensonge'') is a much darker 1999 production, again set in a small village, where the painter Jacques Gamblin is suspected in the rape and murder of a little girl; only his wife, the sublime Sandrine Bonnaire, stands with him. Of the two films that have been seen (though briefly) in the United States, ''L'Enfer'' (1994) is an unsuccessful attempt to complete a project that Clouzot was developing when he died; despite some strong passages, Mr. Chabrol doesn't share the poisonous cynicism that informed and invigorated Clouzot's films (''The Wages of Fear,'' ''Diabolique''), and the picture comes across as Clouzot light, involving but unsatisfying.

The buried masterpiece in the group is the extremely perverse and original ''Betty'' from 1992, a tale of friendship between two women, the rich widow (St?ane Audran) and the alcoholic floater (Marie Trintignant, a very gifted performer who was killed two years ago by her rock star boyfriend) she picks up in a bar. This twisty, strange, voluptuous film, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, lingers in the imagination for a long time with its dreamy, deliberate pacing, end-of-the-world atmosphere and haunting metaphorical images, including the world's most ominous fish tank. Each film lists for $24.95; all are unrated.

Photo: John Wayne, left, and Robert Stack in ''The High and the Mighty.'' (Photo by Paramount Home Entertainment)